of arrayed warriors and steeds and
elephants looked like the arrays of the celestials and the Asuras in days
of old. The rush of darts formed the fierce winds; great cars, the cloud;
the neigh and grunt of steeds and elephants, the roars; shafts, the
showers; and the blood of warriors and animals, the flood, of that
tempest like nocturnal encounter between those god-like men. In the midst
of that battle, that foremost of Brahmanas, viz., the high-souled
Aswatthaman, scorching the Pandavas, O ruler of men, resembled the midday
sun at the end of the season of rains, scorching everything with his
fierce ray.'"[217]

SECTION CLXIII

"Sanjaya said, 'When the field of battle which had before been enveloped
in darkness and dust had thus become illuminated, heroic warriors
encountered one another, desirous of taking one another's life.[218]
Encountering one another in battle, O king, those combatants, armed with
lances and swords and other weapons, gazed at one another under the
influence of rage. With thousands of lamps blazing all around and with
the more blazing lamps of the gods and the Gandharvas, set upon golden
stands decked with jewels, and fed with fragrant oil, the field of
battle, O Bharata, looked resplendent like the firmament bespangled with
stars. With hundreds upon hundreds of blazing brands, the earth looked
exceedingly beautiful. Indeed, the earth seemed to be in a conflagration,
like what happens at the universal destruction.[219] All the points of
the compass blazed up with those lamps all around and looked like trees
covered by fire-flies at an evening in the season of rains. Heroic
combatants, then, O king, engaged in battle with heroic rivals. Elephants
engaged with elephants, and horsemen with horsemen, and car-warriors with
car-warriors, filled with joy, on that fierce night at the command of thy
son. The clash of the two armies both consisting of four kinds of forces,
became terrible. Then Arjuna, O monarch, began, with great speed, to
destroy the Kaurava ranks, weakening all the kings.'

"Dhritarashtra said, 'When the invincible Arjuna, excited with wrath and
unable to brook (the feats of the Kurus), penetrated into the army of my
son, what became the state of your minds? Indeed, when that scorcher of
foes entered into their midst, what did the soldiers think? What steps
also did Duryodhana think fit to be adopted then? Who were those
chastisers of foes that proceeded in that battle against that